


A Cactus and a Story

by kattastic99



Category: Eddsworld - All Media Types
Genre: And he talks too much and he's a dweeb and he gave them a cactus, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Is my dumb Fae OC, Kelvin - Freeform, Monster Apartments AU, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 09:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6560788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattastic99/pseuds/kattastic99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kelvin is the fae who lives on the top floor, has provided herbs for Edd's magic once so far, and has visited them with a cactus to celebrate their new relationship. He also answers all of Edd's questions at GREAT length.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Cactus and a Story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jujukind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jujukind/gifts), [supercasey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercasey/gifts).



Edd was actually pretty proud of how the luck charm had turned out. The herbs that the fae friend of Tord, Kelvin, had supplied turned out to have been more magically powerful than was usual. The spell in the book said it was supposed to boost the chance of random events turning out in your favor for about a week, but Edd noticed things turning out in his favor pretty consistently for close to a month. But, like the spell’s section in the book said, it was only small things. Edd HAD found a spell in the book that was much more powerful, but the ritual was really complicated and required a lot of really rare ingredients and very precise timing and perfect pronunciation, and had a lot of room for disastrous errors. Edd didn’t want to mess with anything that strong until he was. Well, until he really knew what he was doing. 

…

 

Edd hadn’t know what Kelvin had meant when he said he was going to get a ‘proper’ gift for them, but when the fae showed up a month after that first meeting the wizard found out. 

“Oh, uh. Hi?” Edd answered the door with an air of confusion. Matt was at work, Tord was dozing on the couch with his limbs splayed everywhere, and Tom was piled on top of Tord. Edd didn’t recognize the handsome man currently standing in front of him, and when he noticed the potted cactus in the stranger’s hands he wondered how the guy even rang the doorbell. 

“Hi, Edd!” the stranger said with a pearly white smile. Edd was even more confused now; how’d this guy know his name? Sure, a lot of the residents of the apartment complex knew his face, and knew he was a wizard, but most of them didn’t know his actual name. 

At Edd’s clear confusion, the handsome stranger blinked and then smiled again. “Oh, right, you don’t know this face!” What? “It’s me, Kelvin! You met me when I was Unseelie. This is my Seelie form! Lot less unnerving, huh?” Edd’s face slackened in understanding, then. Now he felt kind of silly, actually. He still didn’t have any books that mentioned fae, but he’d asked Tord for a bit of clarification. The demon had told him more than he actually knew what to do with, actually; apparently the fae world was another dimension entirely, one very closely connected to theirs. Like a shadow, or a reflection, and yet independent and separate. The fae world was much more steeped in magic than Edd’s world, to such a degree that the very nature of reality was a little different. The real difference wasn’t in the world but its people, the fae; despite technically being the same ‘species’ fae were split into two Courts, the Seelie and the Unseelie. While Seelie looked much the same as humans, albeit more fair and pretty and less varied, they were incapable of feeling the majority of what humans called emotions. They liked to play, mostly tricks or games, but they weren’t capable of understanding or caring about the ramifications their games had on people. They also had an extremely unfair sense of trade; a tiny favor they did meant an exorbitant price for you. Eating food in their world trapped you for a long time, but Tord said the reason wasn’t because the food anchored you but because by eating some of their food you traded years of your life in exchange. 

The Unseelie, Tord had explained, didn’t play tricks or games nor did they give costly favors. They had an extremely different set of rules they lived by, mirrored by their appearance. Where Seelie were pretty but cold hearted, Unseelie were monstrous looking and very aggressive. They played by the rules of the wilds, the rules of dominance and strength. In their eyes, the Seelie were weak and deserving of dominance and eradication, but in the Seelie’s eyes the Unseelie were horrid brutes that ought to be gotten rid of for the better of themselves. As such, the Seelie and Unseelie were constantly at war. Tord told him that just like werewolves and vampires fought a war, so did the two fae Courts. Edd himself found it all very confusing and pointless, but like Tord had pointed out he would, being a human. For the Pure Born, their feuds were serious business. 

Edd had asked Tord about Kelvin specifically, but the demon declined. “That’s his life, and his story, Edd. You’ll have to ask him if you want to know more than what I’ve told you.” And it seemed that right now was his chance, although there was the matter of the cactus to deal with first.

“I suppose so!” Edd finally answered him. “Not that your other form is, like, hideous or anything!”  
He hastily added. To that, Kelvin laughed, showing off his clean white teeth yet again. “No need to lie to spare my feelings, Edd, my Unseelie form is a right nightmare! Besides, I’ve not got feelings to hurt! May I come in?”

Edd hesitated. Matt had seemed awfully wary of Kelvin, although Tord insisted he was fine and even Edd felt that Kelvin wasn’t a bad guy. Still, though…. Matt seemed wary, and this was his home as much as it was Edd’s. Then again, Tord and Tom were both here, so if anything went sour he could just wake them up. 

“Um, sure!” Edd said before he turned from the door and walked inside. Edd headed to the living room and sat down on the comfortable arm chair next to the couch. In the many months since he’d moved in, Edd had come to terms with leaving the front doors open, since they closed by themselves. It had been weird at first, but he was used to it now. 

Kelvin walked in behind him and sat the cactus down on the coffee table before sitting down on the floor, for some reason. Edd had to ask. “So, um. Kelvin. Why, uh. Why a cactus?”

He’d been afraid of offending Kelvin with that question but the fae just beamed like he’d been hoping Edd would ask him that. “I’m glad you asked, actually! It’s a housewarming gift!” Edd’s confusion must have shown on his face, because Kelvin clarified. “Oh, no not. Not what you think of a housewarming? It’s hard to explain simply, but. See, when you move into a new house, that’s a new home! So you get gifts. But a housewarming can be for more than you just making your home of a new house, it can be for making a new house! Like, family house not building house. It’s a gift to celebrate your four separate lives being turned into a singular relationship! We fae view unions like their own individual entity, but ones without a life. So we give plants, a simple life but a life nonetheless, to stand in as the life of the relationship that’s been born. It’s an old tradition, older than most human nations, and before you worry housewarming gifts are never given with expectations attached. To expect something in return would be a foul thing indeed, and would get a fae in heaps of trouble if they demanded recompense for one.”

Wow, that was neat! Edd had always liked learning new things, and Kelvin seemed like he enjoyed teaching things. Or at the very least explaining things and answering questions. But, before he asked anything else, Edd still had to ask something about the gift. “That’s really neat! But, um. Why a cactus, specifically?”

Now Kelvin’s expression was almost bashful. “Oh, well. Tord and I go way, way back, so I know more than anybody how far away he is from a green thumb. I picked a cactus so you guys didn’t accidentally kill it.”

Oh. Well then. 

Wait. “Wait, hold up,” Edd said as he leaned forwards in his seat, “how far back do you and Tord GO?” Kelvin beamed again, like he wanted Edd to ask this question too. “Tord and I met in eighteen oh four!” Oh. Wow, how old WAS Tord? How old was Kelvin? Edd decided to ask another time. 

“Wow,” Edd said, “that’s pretty far back. Do you, uh. Do you mind if I ask you some questions?” he said kinda hopefully. “About Tord?” Kelvin asked with a curious expression. Tord was right in the room after all, although somehow still asleep under Tom. “No, actually,” Edd said, “about fae.”

And if Edd thought he’d seen Kelvin happy to hear a question then clearly he was wrong because now Kelvin looked like Edd had given him a block of solid gold. “I would literally love to hear questions about my people, my world, and my personal past if you had any. I’m an open book! You can also ask me about that.”

This was weird. This was definitely weird, but. Edd didn’t really care. “Tord told me some already, but he said that anything more detailed I’d have to ask you. He said it wasn’t his place to tell me.” Kelvin actually seemed. Touched? Maybe there was a history between these two that Edd hadn’t picked up on. Then again, he’d thought Tom and Tord were dating when they weren’t so he wasn’t about to assume anything again. 

“Well, uh. When he first brought me up to meet you, Tord mentioned you were half Unseelie?” Kelvin nodded in affirmation. “Okay, so. What does that really mean?”

Kelvin shifted a bit, sitting up a little straighter. Apparently this was going to be a long answer. “Well, to answer that question you’d need to know the difference between Seelie and Unseelie. Did Tord tell you that much?” Edd nodded. “Yeah, he told me that Seelie look human, but they don’t have our emotions, and they play tricks but don’t understand or care what the tricks do to people, and that they force people to pay extreme prices for tiny things. He also told me why eating in the fae world makes you stay, cause the exchange for a snack is years of your life. He also told me that Unseelie are really monstrous, and they’re very wild. He said they play by the rules of nature, using strength to assert your role and proving your worth by power and dominance. He said the two courts were at war, but that despite the differences they were still the same species? Kind of?”

Kelvin nodded, clearly pleased that Tord had given Edd the basics. “That’s about it, Edd. The Unseelie Court is very aggressive and forceful, and the Seelie Court is very untrustworthy and unfair. See, I said I’m an open book and my Seelie nature is kinda why. Seelie don’t really. WANT to be the way they are, we just. Have to be. It’s a very strong compulsion. If we don’t ask for things in return, we. Well, we don’t get to not ask for things in return, you couldn’t stop us no matter how hard you tried. We have to. We will drop everything, even saving our own lives, in order to finish up a deal out of any interaction that fits specific criteria. I feel it too, the need to levy favors in return for anything I do for people. You have to negotiate back, Edd, if I tell you to give me something, you need to ask me what I did for you that I’m asking for payment for, and then you have to haggle me down to something that isn’t ridiculous. I’ll ask for something insane, it’s my compulsion to, but as long as you haggle back I can manage to be fair. I just can’t be fair by myself, I need people to haggle me down to fair. I’m an open book because my thought processes are odd and disjointed and if I don’t speak my every thought, people in this world won’t be able to figure out what I’m thinking and my instincts will lead me to ruin their damn lives. I don’t mean to do it, I don’t even want to do it, but I will if I don’t speak every thought so people can negotiate and barter. I’ll go over tiny insignificant details, a lot, because it’s how I tally things up and figure out what to ask for, and I say it out loud so people know what I’m counting so they can barter my price down on account of it.”

All this information was kind of boggling, but Edd got it. He’d had a friend in middle school that had OCD, and some of the things they did were similar to what Kelvin was describing, kind of. The need to do certain things, or else a feeling of anxiety and panic so extreme it could drive them mad would kick in. Edd nodded, and said “Yeah, I think I get it. You do unusual things that humans can’t really follow, and you say them all out loud so that they CAN follow and they’ll know how to work with you, cause otherwise they’d be lost and the way your brain works you’d end up swindling them because you can’t bring your prices down without them asking you to.”

Kelvin very visibly relaxed, like the sigh he let out carried a world of tension with it. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. Can’t tell you how relieved I am.” Edd smiled, and then he asked his next question. “So that’s Seelie, right? But you said you’re both?” And even though he didn’t word it like a question, the way Kelvin’s expression tightened up indicated he understood anyways. “Half Born,” he said, and the way he said it made it seem like some kind of curse. “My father was Unseelie, and my mother is Seelie.” Edd didn’t miss the different tenses there, but he didn’t push it at the moment and Kelvin seemed grateful. “The Seelie Court is very political, which is something Unseelie both don’t understand and think is stupid. Society in the two Courts is wildly different, and my mom gave birth to me and raised me as Seelie. She was, and is, very beautiful. And very cruel. Not to me!” he hastily added at Edd’s shocked expressions. “She loved me, as a Seelie can. We don’t have emotions. I mean, I guess we do? But it’s not like yours. She didn’t want me to get hurt, and she wanted me to do well and be happy. That’s love for us. Our emotions are what we DESIRE, because we don’t really FEEL, you know? Humans feel, and. We just kinda don’t. So, yeah, she did her best to care for me. But. Even when I was born, I could change. From Seelie, to Unseelie. My mom always told me not to ever do that. She meant well, in doing her best to suppress who I am, because she wanted me to do well in life. In the Seelie Court. And if the things you’ve heard haven't filled you in yet, the Seelie Court is not a happy place to be, let alone grow up in. It’s harsh and cruel and full of political gambits and subterfuge. For a Seelie child, this is a good thing. For an Unseelie child, this is infuriating and pointless. But I wasn’t either of those things. For me, it was confusing and hard to understand, and I was scared of what would happen if I couldn’t figure things out. Eventually, I got found out. I got caught, and my mother did what was best. For her. I don’t blame her,” Kelvin said. He seemed. Sad, almost, but he didn’t seem like it hurt him. Regret, maybe? Edd couldn’t figure it out, but maybe that was kind of the point. “She disowned me, washed her hands of me, and from then on I wasn’t her son. Which is why I still talk to her!” Wait what? Edd’s confusion, once again, must have been clear. “She can talk to me if she wants to, and she does, because she washed her hands of me. She knew that if she didn’t cast me out on my own, the political machinations of the Seelie Court would crush us both. She put her weight on the hope that I’d make it out on my own, and if I did she’d be able to talk with me as she wished. Because I wasn’t hers anymore, I was just another Unseelie fool, and if you want to interact with Unseelie you are free to do so. Interaction between Courts isn’t forbidden or anything. They just hate each other. You’re free to talk to people you hate, hell to make it in the Seelie Court you pretty much have to anyways.”

Kelvin paused, to let it sink in, and when it did Edd prodded for more by asking “So what happened then?”

“Well,” Kelvin said with a smile that suddenly seemed way more dangerous than his others had, “I ran. Ran as fast and as far as I could. And to do that, I shifted to Unseelie, and I flew as fast as my magic and my wings would carry me and I ended up smack dab in the Unseelie Court. And there, I found a place I could exist.” Well, that was goo- “Which meant I had to kill my father.” Oh. “Um. Why?” Edd asked, because seriously what the hell? Kelvin just chuckled at his reaction. “Unseelie Court. Different Court, different Rules. See, I wasn’t born as an Unseelie. I wasn’t born as a Seelie either. Which meant if I wanted to exist on the Unseelie Court’s radar at all, let alone within their Court, I needed a place. You get a place in society when you’re born, but I wasn’t born into either so I didn’t have one. If I wanted to be an Unseelie, they said, I had to take one. And for the Unseelie, that means you have to kick the ever loving shit out of somebody. Now, my dad was a fucking monster. Even for the Unseelie. He looked less like a living creature and more like somebody had a nightmare and made a statue out of metal and leaves and wood and then some kind of fucking unholy nightmare came along and possessed it. He was all claws, and bone, and leaves, and his voice sounded like someone playing a violin with a rusty metal pole. Screechy and loud and resonating. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that I looked like a terror given flesh, and he told me that no matter what happened, he was proud to have created me. Said that if I killed him, it meant he was great, because to create a life strong enough to end you meant you had purpose. He never did a damn thing for me, this was my first time I ever met him, not once did he ever contribute to my childhood nor did he ever do anything for my mom, but that was the kindest thing he could have said. He didn’t apologize, he didn’t bullshit me. He told me the truth; he was proud of what I was. Not even my mom said that. She was worried about my nature, she wanted me to be Seelie, and my dad just wanted me to be strong. He didn’t care what I was, so long as I didn’t let people force me into shit I didn’t want. I told him that what I wanted was a place to exist, I wanted to live somewhere I didn’t have to hide, I wanted to stop dealing with bullshit. And then we fought.”

Kelvin paused again, but this time it seemed to Edd like he was remembering something more than letting Edd absorb information. After a few moments, Edd spoke up again. “Can I ask what happened?” which broke Kelvin out of his spell and got him to say “Yeah, yeah sorry I zoned out for a bit there, thinking about my dad.” Edd nodded in understanding. “Well, what happened,” Kelvin said with a reserved expression, “was that he and I fought, and he shredded one of my wings, which it turns out are really fragile and delicate, and I snapped his arm off and impaled him in the chest with it and then he gashed my face open and ended up ripping off one of my ears, and then I dug my claws into his chest and got my claws hooked over his ribs and then I tore him open and he fell to the ground and he told me that I was so much stronger than he could have dreamed, told me he was glad to die at the hands of someone so strong and he was beyond proud to be my father, and then he stopped talking. And. And then I felt. I don’t know, really, it was the first time I had ever actually FELT something. Turns out Unseelie have animalistic emotions, and uh. It was the first time I’d been in that form long enough to feel something, and I screamed really loud and picked him up and threw him as hard as I could into the forest and then I passed out crying.” 

Edd didn’t really know how to react to this. This was really heavy duty personal shit, and he wasn’t really sure if he should be upset or. Or what. Thankfully Kelvin didn’t seem to know either, since he rubbed the back of his head and said “Sorry, Edd, that was probably too much. My apologies. I can, uh. Continue, if you want?” After taking a moment to think about it, Edd nodded and said “Yeah, I’m okay with hearing more. I’m just. Sorry about your dad, I think.” Kelvin nodded too. “Yeah,” was all he said though.

“Well,” Kelvin continued, “I earned my place. I was Unseelie now. And, as you may have guessed, it turned out to be just as shitty for me as the Seelie Court was. Not the same way, though. See, I had always thought that when I was in my Seelie Form I was Seelie, and when I was in the other form I was Unseelie, but. It turned out in the end that that’s not how it worked. I wasn’t half and half, and it turns out that nobody ever is. Half Borns aren’t half of one side and half of the other. They’re a mixture of both. When a Half Born has two forms, one form that of one species and the other form of the other species, they’re not fully one species in either form. Form A is more species A and form B is more species B, but the qualities of both are always present. When I’m Seelie, my thoughts and desires and instincts and everything that makes me Me are arranged one way. But when I’m Unseelie, I’m not another person. There’s nothing in my Unseelie form that wasn’t always there, those pieces are just arranged differently. I told this to Tom, before. There’s nothing new, when you become a monster. Your pieces are just put together in a very different way, and it’s hard to figure out how to be the person you are when those pieces are in different places. But they’re not gone. And eventually I realized that I wasn’t Unseelie, even if I looked the part. In the end, I decided that I didn’t belong ANYWHERE. The society of the Unseelie Court was so feral, and uncaring. You couldn’t just talk to somebody, you had to snarl and bare your fangs and prove that you were stronger, and if you weren’t then you had to listen to them. It was just another bullshit way of forcing people into betters and lessers, into a hierarchy. The Seelie did it with words and favors and the Unseelie did it with teeth and claws, and I didn’t want to do it at all. So I came here. To the mortal world. I came here, in the middle of the seventeenth century, and I found out that I. Still didn’t fit in. But unlike back home, that wasn’t the same thing. If you don’t fit into society on earth, then you’re part of a different group of people. Back home if you didn’t fit in then you didn’t belong to ANYTHING. So I settled in, learned how to be a fae, instead of Seelie or Unseelie, and that’s who I am here. I’m not a half breed, an outsider, I’m just a fae.”

Kelvin paused again, but this time when he looked around absentmindedly he noticed what time the clock said, and he blinked in surprise. “And as a fae, I have to go.” It was Edd’s turn to blink in surprise. “Wait, what? Why?” 

Kelvin smiled before standing up, and even after sitting on the floor for so long he had no aches, he didn’t need to stretch, he just stood gracefully. “Because I have exactly seven minutes and forty three seconds before I have to add three ingredients to a brew I have steeping, and potion brewing is incredibly precise and complex. I can teach you, some day, but not now.” Edd also got up, to see Kelvin out. “Do you want me to tell Tom and Tord that you were here?” he asked.

“No need,” Kelvin said, “Tord’s been awake since I got here.” Then he gave Edd an odd salute, the same one he’d seen Paul and Patryk give Tord, before he walked out of the living room and left the apartment. Edd just stared in shock at Kelvin as he left, before turning around to see Tord looking at him with a smirk. “He designed the salute when we used to rob trains in the eighteen hundreds. Ah, what a good run we had. We used to get into so much trouble.I also happened to get into Kelvin, if you know what I mean.” For a second, Edd didn’t even process Tord’s words, but when he did his jaw dropped. Tord laughed and shrieked “Oh my god Edd, you should see your face!” to which Tom smacked tord’s face and said “Edd doesn’t need to hear the tales of Kelvin McBondageLord.” Tord chuckled and said “How long have you been awake?” Tom just grunted and said “Long enough to hear you try and give Edd a confused boner. He always does this,” Tom said to Edd suddenly as he rolled over on top of Tord to look at him. “Hey Edd, do you think you could start breakfast? I’m starving.” Tord wiggled underneath Tom, as if trying to dislodge him. “Good idea! Make me some bacon, and a waffle, and more bacon, and grab one our jerky bags too, and fry up a couple eggs, and maybe throw on another pack of bacon.” 

Edd just rolled his eyes and started towards the kitchen. “Mind the cactus!” was all he said moments before Tord managed to shove Tom off him. “What cactus?” Tom started to ask. He didn’t finish his question, though, on account of him using the coffee table to pull himself off the floor and managing to grab the cactus instead.

“That one!” Edd said in response to Tom’s screams and Tord’s laughter.


End file.
